Sometimes, Chris and I are like England and America – two countries divided by a common language.
For instance, what do you call the thing on the left?
I call it a spatula. He calls it an egg turner. We both call the yellow thing at right a spatula, which I realize is a problem, given that it’s what I also call the metal thing. But one is a rubber spatula, or a yellow spatula.
We argued about this for years, until one day in Borders I picked up one of those Dorling-Kindersley illustrated cookbooks and turned to the “utensils” page. There, to my chagrin, the metal thing at left was identified as an “egg turner.” However, to my credit, I showed the page to Chris and waved the white flag.
Recently, our friend The Angry Swede visited for the weekend. He had brought a fabulous lasagna and, having heated it up, was looking for serving pieces. Chris told him to grab the egg turner – a term TAS had never heard.
This set off the whole argument all over again, with scoffing accusations that Chris had made up the term, it didn’t actually exist, isn’t it called a spatula, who ever heard of an egg turner, and so on. I backed Chris up with the cookbook diagram anecdote, and the topic eventually turned to other things – temporarily. The kitchen dispute became the recurring anecdotal theme of the weekend.
TAS, mind you, is the person who introduced our household to the term (which I will spell phonetically) “oost-heevil.” He was shocked that we did not own such an item, so he went out and got us one. You probably call it a cheese plane, but we have all been trained to call it by its Swedish name. And it is a handy little product.
Although Chris and I mostly speak the same language, differences remain.
He says “root” for “route,” whereas I rhyme it with “bout.”
He says “on-velope” whereas I say “in-velope.”
He pronounces the a in diaper, not that we have to say that word much anymore. For this I blame his English mother – nobody in America says anything but “die-per.”
Likewise, he says Home Depot, as in Johnny Depp-o. The boys use the TV ads with the dee-poh pronunciation as proof of how it should be said, and over time, Chris has caved.
Our boys have all picked up on the prevailing words and pronunciations of the East Coast, leaving me to be the odd woman out in my household of menfolk. Like an oost-heevil in a drawer of cheese planes.
Any divisive words in your homestead?
